When you make an offer, you don’t want to make just an ordinary offer. You want to make The Irresistible Offer.

To do that, you have to answer four questions in the prospect’s mind:

1) What are you trying to sell me?

2) How much?

3) Why should I believe you?

4) What’s in it for me?

The first three appeal to the buyer’s logic while the last question goes to his emotions. These are addressed through three key elements:

1) A high ROI offer

Even if you employ all the sales tactics and gimmicks in the world to get a buyer, you will end up with a very disatisfied customer if your product sucks. It is no longer sufficient to “sell the sizzle without the steak“.

2) A Touchstone

A touchstone is a simple statement of clarity that addresses as many of the four questions mentioned above as possible. Some examples (Are you able to guess where they came from?):

“Pizza hot and fresh to your door in 30 minutes or less or it’s free”

“10 CDs for 1 Cent”

“When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight“.

3) Believability

What you promise has to be believable. For example, if you hype up your offer and then give a tremendous discount, people will get suspicious.

The process does not end after you have created your irresistible offer. Mark talks about The Great Formula, having which you can have business success.

1) Create the irresistible offer.

2) Present it to a thirsty crowd.

3) Sell them a second glass. This is where you will make most of your profits. Upsells, cross-sells, follow-ups and continuity programs.

Mark Joyner then mentions about the use of offer intensifiers to boost your offer’s effectiveness. These can be done through the use of urgency, added value (or bonuses), risk reversal, scarcity, pricing tricks, uniqueness, brand value and recommendations.

About twenty-five percent of the book is devoted to the topic of viral marketing. Think about it. If you can create “The Irresistible Offer“, you can certainty get many people to talk about you!

It seems a good example of the Great Formula in action is Mark’s Simpleology. After he creates the irresistible offer with a free Simpleology 101, he then sells a second and third glass with Simpleology 102 and 103.